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8 - Inflectional Endings: Conjugation

from Part 2 - Inflectional and Derivational Morphology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 May 2024

By
Ian Press
Edited by
Danko Šipka  and
Wayles Browne
Danko Šipka
Affiliation:
Arizona State University
Wayles Browne
Affiliation:
Cornell University, New York
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Summary

The Slavic languages are fusional. Categories include person, gender, number, tense, aspect, and mood. We concentrate on endings for non-past, compound tenses, aorist, imperfect, and imperative, starting from Proto-Slavic (PSL), with reference to Proto-Indo-European (PIE). The time lapse between PIE and PSL is vast, so details are largely unrecoverable. The situation in the modern Slavic languages is sketched, summarizing secondary and primary endings, roots, themes, and thematic and athematic formations. The PIE present, aorist, and optative are outlined. Morphological persistence, innovation, and loss are evident from the data, and analogy plays an important and expected role. Attention is drawn to uncertainties in the origins of the various endings, uncertainties which on the whole have been pointed out, though much is open to research and discussion. Overall, the general state of the art in the field is well-established, but there is scope for further investigation, as becomes even clearer once viewed alongside other chapters.

Keywords

inflectional endingsProto-Indo-EuropeanProto-SlavicverbpresentaoristimperfectimperativeL-participle
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Slavic Linguistics , pp. 161 - 178
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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